I am having a hard time dealing with difficult patients (homehealth aide)

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I am having a hard time dealing with difficult patients (homehealth aide)

I have been working as a home health aide for a little over a month. I was assigned to work with a middle aged man who has cerebral palsy. My duties are cooking, cleaning, laundry, dressing him, giving him a shower, and taking him on errands (like to church). He requires a hoyer life in order to get him in and out of bed.

The thing about this guy is that he literally would yell at me and complain that I was not placing the sling on him correctly before I even got a chance to properly lock the sling onto the hoyer lift. I never said anything back and would just let him yell because mentally he has the mind of a 16 year old. Eventually he would apologize and I would tell him "it's okay, I understand youre worried about your safety." I never put him in the hoyer lift wrong, and always made sure that he was locked in, I would even have him check to see if everything was fine.

Still, he would call the agency up and complain that he doesn't feel safe and that he thinks he is going to fall. The agency expressed their concerns and I told them that often he yells at me and it does make me nervous when I am trying to lock him into the hoyer lift. However, I have never felt incompetent that I didn't know what I was doing. The agency talked with the guy and after that he stopped yelling and preaching to me whenever I was transferring him to and from bed. But he never stopped complaining to the agency about me; the agency assured me that he complains a lot about alot of the HHAs so I was not supposed to take it 'personal'.

My issue with him is that if you don't jump when he says how high he has an issue with it; I guess it comes from people doing everything for him. On my last shift his glasses had broken and he wanted me to take them to a shop to get them fixed after church. However, I politely told him that I would not be able to do that because after service is over with it's really dark and i do not know my way around the city. I do not live in his area and there are no street lights on the road. I think this make him upset, but I can't put my life and his in jeopardy trying to find a store at 8pm at night in an area that I don't know that well.

The final straw was on my next shift, he called the agency and began to trash talk me while I was there. He was on the phone saying that he couldn't stand me, that I was difficult to work with and I was intimidating. I was upset and I approached him and told him that I did not appreciate him talking about me as if I wasn't there to the agency. He did this on purpose because he had all day earlier to complain but he waited until I was there to call the agency up and express how much he was disappointed in my work performance. I felt very disrespected.

The agency removed me from the assignment and I am waiting for them to find me sombody else. But I think that I have a bad rep with this company becaues of this situation. I tried my hardest with this guy and I should have followed my gut instinct and requested someone else before it got to this point. I truly feel that the patient just did not like me for personal reasons and wanted to sabotage things for me.

You were correct in realizing there was a point in time when you should have taken the initiative and requested to be removed from the case. Next time be proactive so that you have more control over your professional reputation. And get used to the idea of patients and their families complaining to the agency whether they have a justifiable reason or not. Some of them do it to manipulate you and the agency, others do it because it has become a part of their dysfunctional coping. It is best to find a second agency to work with, so that you always have the upper edge in having more than one client to keep you going when you are between cases. And don't let a bad situation go so this far next time. Don't feel bad, it is him, not you.

You were correct in realizing there was a point in time when you should have taken the initiative and requested to be removed from the case. Next time be proactive so that you have more control over your professional reputation. And get used to the idea of patients and their families complaining to the agency whether they have a justifiable reason or not. Some of them do it to manipulate you and the agency, others do it because it has become a part of their dysfunctional coping. It is best to find a second agency to work with, so that you always have the upper edge in having more than one client to keep you going when you are between cases. And don't let a bad situation go so this far next time. Don't feel bad, it is him, not you.

Yes, this guy copes with his condition by constantly complaining about everything, and he often exaggerates the extent of what happened in order to garner sympathy from his mother and the agency. I greatly emphatize that life must be hard being confined to a wheelchair for your whole life but making other aides miserable, berating them and costing them their job is not acceptable. I don't care how disabled you are.

I strongly dislike how passive he is, by complaining to the agency about me behind my back. It's not productive at all. As of now, the agency has not called me back or anything. I should have not placed all my eggs in one basket like this. Now I have to search for more work and my family is going to be so disappointed. the job paid good and I need the money to pay for my college (schoolbooks, tuition) I'm trying to be a RN